Spanish lessons and a beach escape: GapBreak Ecuador

COUNTRY: Ecuador
PROGRAM: GapBreak
PROJECT: Teaching & Care Work
WRITTEN BY: Jasmine Byrne

Week One:
It took three planes and about 26 hours but we finally arrived in Quito, Ecuador on he 19th of March. Well actually Samantha, Blake and I did...Charice unfortunately had a bit of trouble, missing two of her flights, she arrived safely though on the 21st. Jeff had arrived a few hours before us due to flying with a different company and was waiting with Marcelo and William, our new host fathers, at the airport.

During our first week we organised our new $50 Ecuadorian phones, adventured around our neighbourhood and the shopping centres 'Quicentro' and 'Megamaxi', and lastly visited the school which Charice, Samantha and I are to teach. The school is called Fernando Pons and has a female principal. The children we so happy to see us giving us lots of hugs and kisses, a student teacher relationship here is nothing like in Australia! On Thursday night we went out, the nightclub district here is called 'La Marisical' and is full of salsa clubs of discotecas.

Friday was left for sleeping and recovering from the night before!

On Saturday we woke early and took a tour bus around Quito to get a feel for the city. The bus took us to 12 stops and we could choose to hop off at any of these to explore a bit and then catch he next bus coming through. The first place we choose to get off at was La Basilica, a huge, very old cathedral. It was beautiful, we climbed to the top of one of the towers for an amazing view of the city! Although Blake didn't join us for the climb as he was too scared. The cathedral also had the most beautiful stain glass window, it was huge! Outside the cathedral were traditional dancers which we watched for a while, their costumes were very colourful! Our next stop on he our was El Panecillo, a small hill but major landmark of Quito, its name means 'little bread loaf'. On the top of this hill is a huge statue of La Virgin de Quito. Here we looked at craft stalls and unappetising food stalls displaying huge pigs heads!

The next stop as Plaza Grande in Old Town, Quito. Here we ate a traditional Ecuadorian lunch of Humitas and sandwiches and tasty little corn cakes which we don't know the name of. After he tour we ventured back to La Marisical for another night on the town. The girls and I asked asked a few police officers for directions to a Nightclub and then we all got chatting and they ended up taking us for tour around the area on their motorbikes! It was vey fun, but very cold! This night was one of Sam's first clubbing experiences and she loved it! Sunday was again for recovery. On sunday it is family day for our host families so we are to venture out and buy our own food and give our families some peace and quite. We had pizza bagels for lunch and spaghetti for dinner.

Week Two:
This week we had our first Spanish lessons. We studied at 'Academia Latinoamericana de Español' with our professora named Alex, she was wonderful. Each was 4 hours and even with a half an hour break in the middle we were still exhausted after each day! We learnt some helpful and common phases and questions to help us survive here in Ecuador.

This school also offers many extracurricular activities so after our 4 days of intensive Spanish we rewarded ourselves with a Salsa dance class which was $3. Here we learnt that Blake is actually an okay dancer and the rest of us have 2 left feet! We did not commence our volunteer work this week due to the intensive Spanish lessons. During our afternoons after school we hung out in the giant Parque La Carolina and played basketball and soccer with the locals! We made many friends and got their phone numbers and an invite to a party.

On Friday we were free from school and the next week our placement sights were closed for the week due to Easter so we decided to venture to the relaxing beach town of Montañita. We took a bus to Guayaquil, the largest city in Ecuador and then found a bus to Montañita! It took us 13 hours of travel but it was well worth it! We stepped off the bus and were hit but humidity and heat which we immediately fell in love with, after all, Quito was a freezing city, so it was a nice change! After walking around the town for a little bit we finally decided that Hostel Pakalora would be our home for he next week. It was a 10 second walk from the beach, had clean rooms with a bathroom, free WI-FI and...its was only $12 a night! Check in time wasn't for a few hour so we dumped our bag and headed to Tiki Limbo for a delicious breakfast for fruit juice, coffee, tea, pancakes, eggs, french toast, fruit salad and homemade bread and jam!!

This was all for $4 each! After this we finally hit the beach. The water was warm and we were all relieved to work on our tans! At night in Montañita the street turn into festival like parties so you can imagine the fun we had fun dancing like hell until very early in the morning!

Week 3 and 4 to come, with information on our teaching placement!

Thanks,
Jasmine Byrne